


Loss

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-17 00:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2290091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard wins the Battle of Bosworth Field. Henry Tudor lies dead in the mud. A oneshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss

_“_ _I was dying, of course, but then we all are. Every day, in perfect increments, I was dying of loss. The only help for my condition, then as now, is that I refused to let go of what I loved. I wrote everything down, at first in choppy fragments; a sentence here, a few words there, it was the most I could handle at the time. Later I wrote more, my grief muffled but not eased by the passage of time. When I go back over my writing now I can barely read it. The happiness is the worst. Some days I can't bring myself to remember. But I will not relinquish a single detail of the past. What remains of my life depends on what happened six years ago. In my brain, in my limbs, in my dreams, it is still happening._ _”_ How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff

* * *

 

 

In the heat of battle, everything stops. The world stops spinning. Men stop thinking. God turns his face away. It’s you or him.

The sunlight reflects off the dented gold of Richard’s crown, his destrier snarls and lashes out at attackers, they’re charging, forward and forward and forward until he knows that if the animal ever stops, his mind will still feel as though it is flying. His battle-axe is cleaving the air apart, and then it is over, and hired Breton men in the pretender’s colours are fleeing the field before the victorious Yorkists and Henry Tudor lies dead in the mud at his destrier’s hooves, head dashed open and brains grey against the coarse grass.

Richard slides off his horse, and immediately Francis Lovell is there with a skin of water, a grim smile on his face and blood congealing at the join of his gauntlet. All Richard can think is, What happens now?

* * *

 

Tudor’s head is spiked above the Tower of London to become carrion, blank, unseeing eyes staring at the grey world as crows attack the rotting flesh.

* * *

 

He doesn’t re-marry. Anne is in her grave, and no other woman will ever fill the void she left in his life, so he names his nephew, Jack de la Pole, heir to the throne and the court life of subdued merry-making and intrigue continues. His sweet bitch of a sister-in-law sits and plots in a country manor, and his nieces dance for him in a whirl of bright colour and dainty steps. He is alone on his throne when he should have had Anne, he should have had scores of children shrieking about the palace.

So he finds himself writing it all down. In council meetings where he half-listens, he sometimes writes a few words down on a piece of parchment, words about he and Anne, about their little boy long gone to the tender embrace of Heaven, and slowly the story starts piecing itself together.

* * *

 

He knows he’s been dying for six years by the time the illness eventually strikes like a coiled serpent riled one too many times. It is quick and it is violent. The fever slips under his skin and one minute he’s burning, the next he’s made of ice. He sees Francis’ face, he sees Rob, he sees all his friends, and then right next to him, Anne, her brown eyes alight, her flowery perfume surrounding him like an embrace. He reaches up a hand to run his fingers through her sheet of copper-gold hair, and then his son is there too, his beautiful little Ned who never should have died, and he’s falling into an ocean crusty with salt, spiralling down into nothing…

* * *

 

Richard, by Grace of God, the third of that name to rule England since the Conquest, was administered the last rites in the early hours of the first of June 1491, and died later that day, and it was three weeks later that the new king found his way into his uncle’s old chambers. He had told the servants to leave all the papers to him, and now he flips through the wrinkled pages, wondering what he should do with them.

A name catches the back of his eye. Dearest Anne, the top line reads and even though Jack knows his uncle is dead, his aunt long dead, it still feels like a sacrilege to read through their private letters.

“Your Grace?”

He jerks, still unaccustomed to being addressed in that fashion, and whips around to see his cousin, Bess, leaning against the doorjamb. There are tear-tracks fierce and red down her pale, perfect cheeks, and weeping lingering on her lashes.

“Ah, lass,” he says, holds open his arms. Bess is crying again, and belatedly, he remembers that Uncle Dickon used to call her lass all the time, something he’d slipped into and never quite got out of the habit of once Bess was grown.

“I miss him so,” she whispers.

“I know,” Jack says, resting his cheek against the golden ringlets that refuse to lie flat against the top of Bess’ head. “I do too.”

She sniffs, and withdraws from his arms, looking down at the papers. “What are those?”

“Uncle Dickon’s papers. Letters to Aunt Anne. I’m loath to read them, but…”

“Let me,” Bess says. She takes them from him, mouths the words silently to herself, and before Jack even knows it, Bess is sobbing softly to herself.

“What does he say?”

She draws in a deep, wobbling breath. “He never sent this, Jack. It’s dated from after Bosworth. It’s not even a letter, really…”

Jack takes it back, forces himself to read past the first line.

_Dearest Anne,_

_An Aldgate inn! Of all the places to find you, it was an Aldgate in. I could scarce believe my ears when Veronique told me, and for a horrific second I thought that she had been mistaken when I arrived and no-one seemed to have seen you, but then you were there on the steps, and my darling, I cannot begin to describe the feeling that took hold of me as I saw you for the first time in those endless four weeks of running after ghosts. It felt as though…no, words do not do justice to it, even after all this time, so I shall not attempt to put it down on paper. I remember taking you in my arms, and knowing that finally, finally you were truly mine and not still living under the shadow of what Lancaster had done to you. I remember how thin and frail you felt, like a tiny fledgling bird and that cough you had developed did give me some bad moments! Anne, I know you would have said that we belonged to each other ever since we were both very young children, but I believe it was that day that was our beginning._

_Look at this. It’s so much longer than the others I’ve written ere it. I’m getting better, my love, getting better. To remember without pain is indescribably hard, though it’s more of a dull, aching longing now than the dagger between the ribs it was in the weeks and months after your death. It be the happiest times that are the most painful to recall because I can never go back there, Anne. I will never be as happy as I was when we were together. Many think your death and Ned’s death is proof that I sinned in taking the crown, and oftentimes when I cannot sleep at night for thinking, I wish I had died on Bosworth Field just so I could see your smile again. Since I defeated Tudor, however, the rumours have grown less and less. Ah, Anne, I miss you so very much. I hope you’re taking good care of our boy for me._

Jack looks up towards Bess. “Be they all like that?”

Tears swim like molten silver in the summer’s day of her eyes. “Yes. It looks as though he’s been writing them since a year or so after Bosworth. It starts from right when they be children.”

“Your Grace?” A voice sounds up the tight, twisting stairwell from the Great Chamber and Jack puts the rest of the crinkling parcel of letters into Bess’ hands.

“Keep them safe for me,” he says, and then he is gone, striding out of the room. Bess stands there for a second, then sinks to the floor, her skirts pooling around her. No-one should be looking for her this afternoon – Queen Madge is in confinement with plenty of ladies to attend her.

Bess picks up the next letter.

_Shene, 1489_

_Dearest Anne…_

**Author's Note:**

> If you're confused by any of the minor characters do ask - most of them are actually from the Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman, which is a marvellous book about Richard III. Please leave a comment if you have time.


End file.
